1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) based systems, and more specifically relates to a system and method that allows arbitrary Java classes comprised of non-EMF objects to be used in an EMF environment.
2. Related Art
Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) is a modeling framework and code generation facility for building tools and other applications based on a structured data model. In EMF based systems, application objects are formally modeled using XMI (XML Metadata Interchange) files written in XML (eXtensible Markup Language) that describe the class attributes and relationships between objects. EMF allows the formal modeling concepts to take on real software form (as Java classes) right in the application space utilizing EObjects and EClasses. However, this also requires the application to be EMF based. Since EMF technology is fairly new, it can be used only with new EMF-based applications, not existing non-EMF-based applications. A problem that arises is how to introduce formal modeling in applications that are based on traditional Java classes, not EMF's EObjects and EClasses.
WDOs (Web Data Objects), and more recently, SDOs (Service Data Objects) are based on EMF. SDO is a framework that simplifies and unifies data application development in a service oriented architecture (SOA). It supports and integrates XML and incorporates J2EE patterns and best practices.
Currently, there exists no solution to the problem of how to introduce EMF-based modeling in applications that are based on traditional Java classes. Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method that would allow EMF based frameworks such as SDO and WDO to be used with existing non-EMF-based Java applications.